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Participation in InCommon Federation ("Federation") enables the participant to use Shibboleth identity attribute sharing technologies to manage access to on-line resources that can be made available to the InCommon community. One goal of the Federation is to develop, over time, community standards for such cooperating organizations to ensure that shared attribute assertions are sufficiently robust and trustworthy to manage access to important protected resources. As the community of trust evolves, the Federation expects that participants eventually should be able to trust each other's identity management systems and resource access management systems as they trust their own.

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Two criteria for trustworthy attribute assertions by Credential Providers are: (1) that the identity management system fall under the purview of the organization's executive or business management, and (2) the system for issuing end-user credentials (e.g. PKI certificates, userids/passwords, Kerberos principals, etc.) specifically have in place appropriate risk management measures (for example authentication and authorization standards, security practices, risk assessment, change management controls, audit trails, etc.).

InCommon expects that Resource Providers, who receive attribute assertions from another organization, respect the other organization's policies, rules and standards regarding the protection and use of that data. Furthermore, such information should be used only for the purposes for which it was provided. InCommon strongly discourages the sharing of that data with third parties, or aggregation of it for marketing purposes without the explicit permission [#1] of the identity information provider.

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1.1 InCommon Participant Operational Practices information below is for:

University of California, Davis as of 1 December 2010 (based on the POP version submitted 19 July 2007).

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The following person or office can answer questions about the Participant's identity management system or resource access management policy or practice.

2. Credential Provider Information

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2.3 Please describe in general terms the administrative process used to establish an electronic identity that results in a record for that person being created in your electronic identity database? Please identify the office(s) of record for this purpose. For example, "Registrar's Office for students; HR for faculty and staff."

System-specific IDs are issued to affiliates on their respective systems of record (SORs). Payroll issues employee IDs to faculty and staff. The campus Student Information System, operated by the Registrar, issues student IDs to students and applicants. A small number of additional "external" SORs (e.g., University Extension, Cooperative Extension, and some of the professional schools) generate identifiers specific to their information systems.

A central accounts management system operated by Information & Educational Technology integrates identity data from these SORs into a metadirectory, reconciling and merging the data, and issuing a numeric, institutionally-unique identifier (coloquially "MothraID") for each affiliate. Identity data for sponsored temporary affiliates is entered via an application hosted on the central accounts management system.

Presentation of a government-issued ID is required in all cases except for applicants and matriculating students.

Affiliates visiting the accounts management system to create accounts and provision services are required to verify their identity with a number of pieces of information that, in combination, are considered known only to the affiliate.

2.4 What technologies are used for your electronic identity credentials (e.g. Kerberos, userID/password, PKI, ...) that may be used with InCommon actions? If more than one type of electronic credential is issued, how is it determined who receives which type? If multiple credentials are linked, how is this managed (e.g. anyone with a Kerberos credential also can acquire a PKI credential) and recorded?

Kerberos is the principal store of credential information. Secondarily, login IDs and password hashes are maintained in NIS maps (deprecated), LDAP, and Active Directory. The central accounts management system synchronizes password changes as necessary.

2.5 If your electronic identity credentials require the use of a secret password or PIN, and there are circumstances in which that secret would be transmitted across a network without being protected by encryption (i.e. "clear text passwords" are used when accessing campus services), please identify who in your organization can discuss with any other Participant concerns that this might raise for them:

The University completed an initiative to eliminate unprotected passwords on the network.

2.6 If you support a "single sign-on" (SSO) or similar campus-wide system to allow a single user authentication action to serve multiple applications and you will make use of this to authenticate people for InCommon Resource Providers, please describe the key security aspects of your SSO system including whether session timeouts are enforced by the system, whether user-initiated session termination is supported, and how use with "public access sites" is protected.

The campus employs both a home-grown legacy SSO ("DistAuth") and JA-SIG CAS. Both authenticate against the campus Kerberos service. Both employ configurable session timeouts in addition to a twenty-four hour Kerberos TGT timeout. Although both SSO services offer a limited form of user-initiated logout, clients are nonetheless strongly cautioned to close browser sessions when finished. InCommon Resource Providers will authenticate via JA-SIG CAS.

2.7 Are your primary electronic identifiers for people, such as "net ID," eduPerson EPPN, or eduPersonTargetedID considered to be unique for all time to the individual to whom they are assigned? If not, what is your policy for re-assignment and is there a hiatus between such reuse?

The UC Davis institutionally-unique identifier ("MothraID") is permanent, never reassigned, and is not reused.

_+A campus NetID (Kerberos login ID) is considered permanent as long as the client remains affiliated with the University, and the client does not rename the NetID. NetIDs no longer in use remain ￢ﾀﾜlocked￢ﾀ� for one year following removal, after which they may be reused._+

Certain affiliates (faculty, staff, alumni), after separating from the University, are eligible to participate in an email-forwarding service. As long as they recommit once every two years using their campus NetID, they may maintain email forwarding indefinitely.

The eduPersonTargetedID attribute is not currently available in production systems. Projects on the horizon will shortly mandate the use of one or both of these attributes. The eduPersonPrincipalName attribute, being composed from the campus NetID, may change if someone chooses to rename their NetID (Kerberos login ID). The eduPersonTargetedID attribute will be permanent, very likely algorithmically composed, and so not changable by the end user.

Electronic Identity Database

2.8 How is information in your electronic identity database acquired and updated? Are specific offices designated by your administration to perform this function? Are individuals allowed to update their own information on-line?

Electronic identity information is maintained per the description in section 2.3. In some cases, the central accounts management system periodically polls authoritative SORs. In other cases, the SORs upload identity data on an as-needed basis.

Individuals are allowed to update their data according to policies of the respective SORs.

2.9 What information in this database is considered "public information" and would be provided to any interested party?

_Information in the identity database, per se, is generally not considered "public information", with respect to being available to any interested party, except as authorized for publication in the campus directory, or for conducting official university business. Some of this information may be made public per policies of the respective SORs.

Your Uses of Your Electronic Identity Credential System

2.10 Please identify typical classes of applications [#5] for which your electronic identity credentials are used within your own organization?

A sampling of applications which may employ electronic credentials can be found at the UC Davis Computing Resources site.

Attribute Assertions

Attributes are the information data elements in an attribute assertion you might make to another Federation participant concerning the identity of a person in your identity management system.

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• [] control access to on-line information databases licensed to your organization?
• [] be used to purchase goods or services for your organization?
• [] enable access to personal information such as student loan status?

Privacy Policy

Federation participants must respect the legal and organizational privacy constraints on attribute information provided by other participants and use it only for its intended purposes.

2.12 What restrictions do you place on the use of attribute information that you might provide to other Federation participants?

Attributes are released for use by other federation participants on a per-agreement basis, taking into account federal, state and local regulations, university policy, and business need.

2.13 What policies govern the use of attribute information that you might release to other Federation participants? For example, is some information subject to FERPA or HIPAA restrictions?

See the policy links in section 1.2.

3. Resource Provider Information

Resource Providers are trusted to ask for only the information necessary to make an appropriate access control decision, and to not misuse information provided to them by Credential Providers. Resource Providers must describe the basis on which access to resources is managed and their practices with respect to attribute information they receive from other Participants.

UC Davis IET is not presently a Resource Provider.

4. Other Information

4.1 Technical Standards, Versions and Interoperability

Identify the version of Internet2 Shibboleth code release that you are using or, if not using the standard Shibboleth code, what version(s) of the SAML and SOAP and any other relevant standards you have implemented for this purpose.

Shibboleth IdP 2.1.5

4.2 Other Considerations

Are there any other considerations or information that you wish to make known to other Federation participants with whom you might interoperate, e.g., concern about the use of clear text passwords or responsibilities in case of a security breach involving identity information you may have provided?

N/A.

Additional Notes and Details on the Operational Practices Questions

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The numbered paragraphs below provide additional background to the numbered questions in the main part of this document.
[1.2] InCommon Credential Providers are strongly encouraged to post on their web site the privacy and information security policies that govern their identity management system. Resource Providers are strongly encouraged to post their policies with respect to use of personally identifying information.
[1.3] Other InCommon Participants may wish to contact this person or office with further questions about the information you have provided or if they wish to establish a more formal relationship with your organization regarding resource sharing.
[2] Many organizations have very informal processes for issuing electronic credentials. For example, one campus does this through their student bookstore. A Resource Provider may be more willing to accept your assertions to the extent that this process can be seen as authoritative.
[2.1] It is important for a Resource Provider to have some idea of the community whose identities you may represent. This is particularly true for assertions such as the eduPerson "Member of Community" or "student," etc. A typical definition might be "Faculty, staff, and active students" but it might also include alumni, prospective students, temporary employees, visiting scholars, etc. In addition, there may be formal or informal mechanisms for making exceptions to this definition, e.g. to accommodate a former student still finishing a thesis or an unpaid volunteer.

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